The thing I like about meditation is that it gives me insights. Usually the insights relate to something I’m trying to understand in the day to day, but something new sometimes pops out that gives a little boost to what I refer to as my “personal power.” I love to figure out why things don’t work, because that knowledge is the most direct path to figuring out what does work. So, when I find something that doesn’t fit, I try to figure out WHY it doesn’t fit, before I proceed down that old path of life, especially if I’m at a fork in the path. That just seems like good common precautionary sense to me.

What I am trying now to understand is community. During this last week of writing and thinking about the relationships between human communities and biological communities, I learned so much that I wanted to share with a real community. I tried. But first the insight story.

I woke up feeling down. But I learned a technique from mindfulness meditation. So this time, instead of running screaming from the stage, or throwing myself into some communal activity that everyone else thinks is fun, I sat down for a few minutes and asked myself: “Self, what’s going on here? Unless it’s physical, like maybe diesel fumes in the air, you have no reason to feel like this. What’s your problem?” And my self said to me: “What’s YOUR problem. We are spitting nails angry and all you can think to do about it is pretend that we are depressed. That’s one way to deal – we won’t get in trouble with anyone else being depressed — but – how dumb is that? We aren’t going to find our community by being depressed because of a couple of kiss-offs.”

We humans have devised kiss-off behaviors to avoid hurting feelings. That’s not a bad thing, but if you are claiming to grow compassionate community you should try to not be unkind and dishonest. Dishonesty and distrust do not grow community, nor do they avoid hurt feelings.

What I suggest instead, if anyone out there really wants community, is honest discussion. Honest discussion does not include effusive well-wishing — when you don’t. And it doesn’t include: “I don’t understand.” When you don’t want to hear about it. Neither does it include the two biggest community killers I know: 1) The deeply imprinted American need to be better than others in order to feel good about ourselves; and 2) the equally American cultural dogma: “Everyone has a right to his own opinion.” Everyone does not have a right to his own opinion if it is harmful. And if you really do NOT want to grow community – don’t say that you do. It only adds to the confusion, and community building is difficult enough without added confusion.

Honest discussion of important issues is a responsibility of community, and the discussion must consider the cause and effect (karma) relationships among all the levels of life that impact our common welfare. That must include: individual welfare, community welfare, and the welfare of the whole of unitary Life, for its own sake. For our sake.

There is a great deal that all of us can do to give humans of the future, our grandchildren, a better life than they will have if we continue on as we are. Especially those of us in the United States. If we learn to connect the dots between what we do right now – all of our actions — and what happens in the future. In other words, if we pay close attention to causes and effects.

I learned to do this when I became one of the earlier women working in the field of science (Not technology. Science itself actually is the study of causes and effects. Technology is about making things.) So here I was trying to succeed, while the well-meaning men scientists were trying to help by telling me how to succeed. The problem for me was, at that time, what worked for the men did not work for women to succeed in science. Especially unmarried women. And the men scientists were firmly convinced it would work for women. You would think a bunch of scientists would be more logical about this, wouldn’t you, but they wouldn’t discuss anyone else’s causes and effects because they believed there weren’t any – and they “knew best.”

First I blamed myself. I watched what I did. I started to notice correlations: I do this; that happens. So I change this; something else happens. If it happens enough times, then I begin to believe it’s not my mistakes that cause something to happen – it’s just the way things are. It was how the law of cause and effect worked in that culture at that time, and the more I know about this cause and effect thing, the more power I have in my life. Not the power to change unchangeable things. The power to know what will happen, or what is most likely to happen, according to what I choose to do.

So I am a pretty good scientist. I experimented on the men, and the employer, and have been doing it ever since. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than believing in the powers that be and it’s very much better than just doing what looks like it might be good, or other people think it’s good, without studying what is likely to be the result of whatever I do.

So, in terms of politics for example. We collect the things that make good sense (to us, not to our “leaders”) and the things that people are doing that are working, and those that are not working and we try to understand why — and the things that we physically can not do because of the laws of nature.

We then project everything into the future, what we want the future to be like. We do not listen to opinions but only to cause and effect realities. If we don’t understand the realities, we ask people who are qualified. Or mostly we can simply use good common sense. For example, population. How many people can be supported by one acre of our earth? The answer is we don’t know. We can research the question, but that would be a displacement activity. To avoid doing what needs to be done. We do know there is a limit. It’s only good common sense. Therefore we should factor population into all of our planning.

Nobody can work for now, because the now I just wrote is already gone. Everybody really wants to live a worthwhile life, and that means doing something that will benefit others. And we all have a responsibility to work for the future. Especially now we have the responsibility, because our problem is going to get a lot worse before it gets better – no matter what anyone does.

Every normal person cares about the future, and we also know we need solid facts to build a solid future for people on this earth. There is no way that self-serving propaganda can build a viable, sustainable future, and it’s still possible to find good factual information if we try. Several fact-based information programs are available on our local, un-afilliated radio stations. And we can still find honest facts on the internet. Step one, of course, is to make sure these really are facts by following up the references. And then we need to use our good common sense when we use our information.

Today I found an example on the internet of two people responding in different ways to an obvious fact. I copied them into my blog as they were written, partly to show you that we do NOT need to be highly skilled in the intellectual arts to have and to use our good common sense.

The fact is we are in a drought. The reactions of the two people, first:

“I live in Texas; right noe, we are PRAYING that tropical storms head our way; dsperately NEED the moisture they are picking up in this area; once we get the rain cycle sarted, we will be doing better; so lets NOT gripe about the storms coming in, prya that we DO get them in this area!”

And here is the answer:
“how about no. NO storms for the gulf at all. Last thing this economy needs is higher oil and gas prices because of stupid speculation of a storm or hurricane threatening a oil rig shutdown. “
So he wants lower oil and gas prices. Let’s forget about whether or not storms in the gulf raise the price of oil and gas. I doubt if they do. But I’m pretty sure a shortage of corn would, because about 10% of gasoline is now alcohol made from corn, and we do grow quite a lot of corn, or we did before this year. So a little storm in the gulf might help lower the price of corn.

And our food that we eat comes from supermarkets, right? To where it is shipped in a zillion trucks and airplanes from somewhere else, mostly using diesel and mostly not necessary because we can grow food right here in the Brazos Valley – or we could before the drought, so the price of food goes up.

And hay for the animals comes from the feed store. But, in the drought our local farmers can’t grow enough. So then the cattle breeders stop producing calves when there is no food for them to eat. Again the price of food goes up.

And then, where is the water to fill up the water wells and farm ponds and aquifers? Can we open a spigot and it pours out from – where? The price of water will go up – and worse as we start scraping the bottoms of those aquifers. It’s already pretty expensive, way too expensive to water a cornfield or fill up a farm pond that can’t take care of itself. The price of water goes up.

Then what happens to the wild life? Let’s take bees for example. Bees and wasps and all those bugs are always buzzing around my place, but I haven’t seen them this year. Not even flies. And this year for the first time my property produced no fruits – no wild plums or grapes. Normally I have enough wild plums to last for two years. This year – lots of flowers but no bees to pollinate them and not one fruit.

It’s way past time we wake up to the fact that the healthy earth provides our clean water, our normal weather patterns, our breathable air, and soil to grow our food. The gas and oil will run out anyhow in whatever future we plan, and our economy will not recover, because it is based in Ponzi economics. But – unless we mess it up so badly that it can no longer function as it has done for us, the good green earth will still be making our air, water, weather patterns and soil.